Paving The Way

Many conglomerates are dipping into their resources and technical expertise to build supporting infrastructure like charging stations, which will ensure electric vehicles have a smooth ride on Indian roads

- Ruchika Shah

Without supporting infrastructure, an electric vehicle (EV) is just a showpiece— an innovation sitting pretty in a garage. Even as governments push to replace polluting internal combustion engines with cleaner EVs, the major impediment to their adoption is ‘range anxiety’—the fear that an electric vehicle will run out of power before it reaches its destination or a charging point.

According to the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV), there are about 4.15 lakh electric two-wheelers, 18 lakh electric three-wheelers, 6,100 electric four-wheelers and 21 electric buses plying on Indian roads.

The public charging infrastructure, which alone will ensure they stay on the road, is, however, negligible. There were just 353 public charging stations in India till 2016 (100 in Bengaluru alone), of which less than a tenth were fast charging stations, according to market research and advisory firm BIS Research.

To that end, Indian conglomerates, with legacies spanning 18 to 100 years, have now assumed the mantle of making India EV-ready.

Tata Power, Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (TPDDL)—a joint venture between Tata Power and the Delhi government, where the former owns 51 percent—NTPC Limited, JSW Energy, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Power Grid Corporation of India (PGCIL) are digging into their resources, technical expertise and experience to build charging networks and supporting infrastructure in the country.

The companies Forbes India spoke to say they are working at a slow but steady pace, with one eye on government policies and the other on the type of EVs and charging points that emerge from manufacturers.